Articles in category: Talent Management

So says new research that determined increasing happiness boosted productivity.

It’s natural to believe that success will bring you happiness, but a variety of psychologists, including Harvard’s Shawn Achor, have argued that this common sense understanding is actually backwards. Success doesn’t make you happy so much as happiness makes you more successful.

The potential benefits of workplace variability are numerous — increased morale, motivation, and the ability to attract and retain talent — yet many managers don’t know where to start. Others are afraid that performance could suffer or something important could fall through the cracks. Even the most employee-oriented managers have concerns about having employees work outside of normal work hours or at places other than the office.

A recent survey finds that new employees aren't impressed by perks like free food and gym memberships, but care a lot about orientation programs, useful feedback, and opportunities to contribute quickly.

You might be taking the wrong tack when you're trying to sell your company to potential employees and retain those already on board.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber on Thursday named Brian McGowan chief operating officer -- a new position for the business organization. McGowan was president and CEO of Invest Atlanta, the economic development arm for Atlanta, since 2011. His start date with the Metro Atlanta Chamber is pending.

Career capital is the currency of professional advancement and success, according to new research by Accenture, as the consulting firm supports International Women's Day. In the study, more than 89 percent of female professionals believe building their “career capital” (those differentiated skills that define and advance their careers) is key to success in the workplace. A similar number of men surveyed also responded the same.

A revealing—and depressing—article in this month’s Harvard Business Review shows that no matter how much power female executives have accrued, or how much lip service male executives might publicly pay, family issues are still seen as a female problem. Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and research associate Robin Abrahams looked at interviews of nearly 4,000 C-suite executives conducted by HBS students from 2008-2013. Forty-four percent of the interviewees were female.

To make your company more productive, you're going to need to think harder about how to motivate employees.

If you're one of those bosses who thinks your company's employee engagement couldn't be better, this infographic by Socialcast may scare you. It shows that most American employees, many of them recent college graduates, are totally disengaged at work. Click through to see why that is and how you can fix the problem at your own company. To enlarge, click the button on the bottom, right.

At first glance, this seems easy. Why not just refocus on positive things? Or, even better, try to reframe. “This day won’t last forever,” you think. Didn’t somebody tell you recently that you do have control over your thoughts when you are anxious or expecting the worst? Then how come this simply doesn’t feel easy when it is one of those days?

The wall between you and your employees is profoundly thick, even if you don't think it is.

When you're running a company, there are independent sources of information that you rely on. The more independent they are, the better the quality of information. For example, your opinion of your own products is less reliable than what your customers think of your products and services. High quality customer information is probably the richest source of data in running any company.

It's an understatement to say that Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, has been in the news lately.

In December, she became the first female CEO of a major automaker. A few weeks later, she was spotlighted during the State of the Union address. On top of this, there were numerous reports comparing her base pay ($1.6 million) to that of her male predecessor ($1.7 million).

Oddly enough, it isn't the truly terrible employees who cause the real problems.

1. They say, "That's not my job." 2. They think they've paid their dues. 3. They think experience is a tangible commodity. 4. They lead the meeting after the meeting. 5. They revel in gossip. 6. They use peer pressure to hold others back. 7. They rush to grab the glory... 8. .... And they rush to throw others under the bus.

Help them make real-world connections, and make it fruitful for the mentor, too.

It's hard to generalize about an entire generation, but with millennials there are some commonalities that might be wise to reference.

When I was 16, in 1991, the American media spent a lot of time generalizing about the traits of everyone born in the mid-60s and 70s and early 80s. First there was Doug Coupland's famous book Generation X.

I’m sure many factors influenced whether you felt like digging right in, but one of the most significant was almost surely your boss. It seems obvious: Direct supervisors who set their teams up for success, observe them in action, ask for feedback, identify the root causes of employee concerns, and then follow through with meaningful improvements have happier, more engaged employees.

Noncompete clauses are a standard feature of many employment contracts. Surveys show that in the United States nearly half of engineers have signed agreements limiting their ability to later work for or start rival firms, as have senior managers at 70% of public companies. According to conventional wisdom, these agreements are crucial to innovation-driven businesses, because they help keep proprietary information and talent safe from the competition. But noncompetes can be a double-edged sword.

But, despite a seriously aging population in the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world, only 4% of this same group saw the aging workforce as an immediate threat to performance. Most expect the effects of aging Boomers to come 3-5 years (37%) or in 5-10 years (37%) out. About 20% don’t see the aging workforce as a concern at all. This survey shows leaders don’t necessarily see a connection between the aging workforce and the negative impacts of skill shortages.

Companies frequently complain that it’s tough to find the right people. If, amidst high unemployment, this seems counterintuitive, consider the deep trends driving the mismatch: technology and globalization have transformed what it takes to succeed in business. A new generation of professionals places more importance on organizational values and passion for the work than on a paycheck.

In his book, Get Rid of the Performance Review: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing and Focus on What Really Matters, Samuel Culbert, professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, calls traditional employee reviews "destructive and fraudulent" displays of "power and subordination."